Rooftop of Leather Trades Building, St. Louis

ABOUT THREE YEARS AGO, I found myself on the roof of the old Leather Trades Building, at 16th and Locust Streets in downtown St. Louis, doing a walk-through for a development company that bought it with the intentions of turning it into Lofts. The design firm I was with was to design a new graphic identity for the place. The inside was a wreck, but finally we got to tour the roof. When I got there, a new world opened up to me. The client thought I was taking pictures for the project (which I was), but in my head I was seeing something much more personal and beautiful—images that had nothing to do with the assignment.